Sindh High Court Chief Justice Mohammad Junaid Ghaffar on Saturday visited the CyberKnife department of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) that is being run in a public-private partnership between the provincial government and the Patients’ Aid Foundation.
JPMC officials informed Justice Ghaffar how the hospital has been transformed from a health facility with 1,185 beds to 2,208 beds in just 13 years.
They said that after the completion of the ongoing development, the upcoming 12-storey and 550-bed Sardar Yasin Malik Medical Complex, and the seven-storey Rabia Rashid Soorty Employees Ward, the JPMC would become the largest healthcare facility in the country.
They also said that all the facilities are free of charge, irrespective of nationality, religion or ethnicity, adding that patients from 15 countries and 167 cities have been successfully diagnosed and treated at the hospital.
The JPMC officials said that the first CyberKnife installed in 2012 used to take 150 minutes to treat a patient, and the second one installed in 2018 took 60 minutes, while the third that was donated by the provincial government in 2024 can treat a patient in just 23 minutes.
They stressed that in today’s world, in addition to the brain, CyberKnife is the best and one of the safest ways to cure stage-1 prostate cancer.
They said the JPMC has two tomotherapy units, and by the year’s end a new Bilquis & Abdul Sattar Edhi Breast Radiation Bay would be operational, having two more tomotherapy units with the option of surface-guided radiotherapy.
The officials said that this unit would be the first of its kind in the country, adding that breast cancer patients requiring radiation would be treated in only five sessions instead of 16 or 28 sessions due to the precision of new units.
This section will only have female staff, and its capacity to treat will be up to 160 patients a day. A brief tour of the facility was also arranged.
Justice Ghaffar expressed his appreciation for the world-class facilities for the diagnosis and the treatment of cancer with radiation, terming them a “beacon of hope” for cancer patients.
He lauded the Patients’ Aid Foundation and the Sindh government for their visionary collaboration in establishing and maintaining such cutting-edge diagnostic and therapeutic technologies in the public sector.
He also acknowledged the generous contributions of the donors, especially the residents of Karachi, and the efforts of the Patients’ Aid Foundation, whose unwavering support and philanthropy made all this possible.
He was of the view that other public sector institutions in the country should emulate this successful public-private partnership model to offer quality health care to the masses free of charge.
Regarding the challenges faced by the JPMC, the issue of shortage of human resources was also discussed. The authorities were of the view that timely recruitment of competent staff is critical for efficient functioning of these sophisticated medical services and ensuring effective management of critical patients.
